I’ve been paying altogether too much attention to going-on at the Episcopal Church USA’s triennial General Convention, and can report that in the closing minutes of today’s final session, the House of Deputies voted in the change to the canons to which I allude earlier, substituting gentler language for the process of moving from one national-ecclesial jurisdiction to another (‘released’ and ‘removed’ instead of ‘renounced’). Raisin Horn and Micah Jackson shot me news via instant message and Facebook wall that future emigrants will not be required to renounce their orders, which is a good thing.
And the House of Bishops kiboshed the explicit ‘pastoral provision’ of the Communion Without Baptism resolution, which had already been focused clearly on the normative precedence of baptism. That too, in my estimation, is a good thing — though I know that my colleagues hold different assessments of that development. No one, anywhere, is proposing that people actively seek out and exclude unbaptised persons; that’s a smelly red herring. The bishops (and I’m not sure what action, if any, the Deputies took) affirmed that baptism is not a matter of indifference. I’m with them.
And so to bed.